At present, cloud computing is developing rapidly. Cloud computing is an Internet-based computing mode, by which shared software/hardware resources and information can be provided to user terminals as required. A network that provides the corresponding resources is named as “cloud”. Users can utilize the user terminals such as desktop or laptop computers, mobile phones, etc., to obtain the services in a pay-as-you-go manner by accessing a data center of the cloud.
Generally, the cloud computing is considered to comprise the following levels of services: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). The cloud computing service often provides a general on-line commercial application accessible via a browser, and corresponding software and data may be stored in a data center.
Currently, some cloud providers build their clouds to provide the cloud computing services, for example, GOOGLE®, MICROSOFT®, AMAZON®, IBM®, SALESFORCE.COM®, CLARIZEN.COM®, etc.
However, there exist the following problems in the existing modes of the cloud computing:
1) Different cloud providers provide different user interface definitions, and the user terminal can only request for the cloud computing service from the cloud provider in conformity with the user interface definition of the user terminal. For example, if the cloud provider provides only web interface, a legacy PSTN phone terminal cannot access the cloud computing service.
2) The user is required to specify the cloud provider directly, thus the cloud computing service is not accessible transparently and automatically.
3) The cloud computer service is not always accessible anytime and from anywhere due to limitation of capability of the user terminal.
Thus, a cloud computing access gateway is expected, which can support the user terminal to access the cloud provider anytime and from anywhere. Moreover, for the user of the user terminal, it is not necessary to specify the cloud provider or take the interface definition adopted by the cloud provider into account.
Some technical solutions about cloud computing gateways, broker methods and systems, etc., have been presented so far. For example, the US patent application No. 2010/0027552A1 “Cloud computing gateway, cloud computing hypervisor, and methods for implementing same”, US patent application No. 2010/0333116A1 “Cloud gateway system for managing data storage to cloud storage sites”, US patent application No. 2010/0318609A1 “Bridging enterprise networks into cloud”, US patent application No. 2010/0235903A1 “System and method for transparent cloud access”, US patent application No. 2010/0332262A1 “Cloud computing resource broker”. But all these solutions focus on the area of PaaS or Iaas of the cloud computing, that is, how to build a cloud middleware to meet different demands of applications on the clouds, and these solutions do not relate to supporting the user to access the cloud computing service anytime and from anywhere.
Therefore, the prior art is still lack of the technique to support the user terminal of the cloud computing service to access the cloud computing service anytime and from anywhere.